


California Love

by LaTessitrice



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 08:43:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19720192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaTessitrice/pseuds/LaTessitrice
Summary: For 3 Days of Echo, day two: post season-one/future.





	California Love

**Author's Note:**

> Once more betaed by maxortecho. Ta lovely!

“There she is,” Liz murmurs as the car rounds the bend, and the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean comes into view. A glittering expanse of sapphire blue topped with foaming white, framed by the last fringes of the treeline the road emerges from. Down below, the beach cuts a pearly crescent against the shore.

Max hums back at her, but his gaze is on the road winding ahead, looking for the turn-off down to the sand. Despite this he’s got a faint, easy smile on his face, and she knows he’s soaking in his first sight of the ocean in as much as she is. She’s spent most of her life in the heart of the continent—in the heart of the desert itself, or in the mountains—so it always takes her breath away, but Max…Max has never seen it at all.

She’s never seen him this relaxed, his shoulders loose and his fingers drumming along to the radio on the steering wheel. He hasn’t frowned once since the plane landed a few hours ago and they collected their baggage. Suggesting they try to pick up the fractured pieces of the road trip they once intended to take is the best idea she’s had in a long time.

Roswell is far behind them, at least for now. And before them—before them is an open sky, blue meeting blue at the horizon.

The road dips down, back into the treeline, meandering to the foot of the cliffs. Things are so different than when she first saw the ocean all those years ago, and yet some things haven’t changed. Her heart is lighter, freed of many of its burdens, and fuller for the love she finally accepted. Her first real glimpse of the water had only reminded her that Rosa had never seen it, and never would—her first wade out into the waves had been to wash away her tears with more salt water, to drown them in their origin and pretend they never happened.

In those glorious few hours where she’d imagined traveling with Max, she’d become so nervous. Sharing a bed with him for weeks at a time had been a big deal, an unspoken promise between them, and it had left her flustered, eager, wanting. Now, she finds herself sinking into the same feeling, even if it’s ridiculous that she does. They share a bed at home—they share an entire house—but this is an opportunity. A chance to recapture who they were all those years ago. The idea of all this time alone with Max—no problems to fix, no lies between them—makes it easy for her to slip back into the mindset of the Liz who knew what love was but didn’t yet know sorrow or real loss.

Finally, they’ve reached the end of the road, and Max parks up in the shade of a grove of cedars. “I think we have to do the rest on foot,” he says, and she only smiles back, shoving her shades down and swinging herself out of the car.

He’s by her side seconds later, reaching for her hand to twine their fingers together, a picnic basket with food and beach essentials in his other hand. It earns him another smile, and she thinks if feels like this all day, she won’t be able to keep her happiness from leaking its way onto her skin and leaving a permanent imprint. It’s clear Max feels the same way, swinging their hands as they lope along the path through the trees, him modulating his long stride to match her own.

Then they’ve broken through, sunlight pouring down upon them and she tips her head back to bathe it, taking a deep breath of brine and ozone.

“Why does it just feel so much  _ sunnier _ here than in Roswell?” she asks.

Rather than soaking up the sunshine like she is, Max is watching her, the softest smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Because it feels like vacation.” The breeze is ruffling his hair, tossing around the long strand that always falls into his face, and she’s got the sudden urge to nuzzle into his neck.

She doesn’t. Instead, she kicks her shoes off, burying her toes in the sand. She’s only in a sundress, her bikini underneath and ready to be unleashed, but first they need to pick the perfect spot to leave their stuff before they go out into the water. They’ve got plenty of choice—the beach is empty, given it’s the middle of the day, in the middle of the week. She eyes the t-shirt Max is wearing above his shorts.

“Are you keeping all of that on?” she asks. “I’m looking forward to rubbing suncream into your shoulders.” They are, in fact, her favorite part of his anatomy. Mostly.

“I don’t need it,” he reminds her. “I won’t burn.”

“Please stop spoiling my fun.”

But he’s shrugging out of the t-shirt anyway, dropping it onto the sand beside her shoes. “Better?”

“Mmm. Much.” She steps closer, sliding an arm around his waist, and he’s always so  _ warm  _ beneath her palms. “And how is your first view of the ocean?”

He’s looking down at her, so earnest suddenly, that she props her shades on her head to meet his gaze. In this light, his eyes are almost amber and somewhere within them she thinks the way he feels about her has been caught, suspended for eternity. She doesn’t mind that at all.

“It’s beautiful,” he replies. “But not as beautiful as you.”

She doesn’t know how he manages it, but he always finds new ways to make her blush and make her heart stutter. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cheesy line—he  _ means _ it, with his entire being, and God help her if she doesn’t love it. Love him. 

She looks away, but he gathers her hands between his, bringing them to rest on his sternum, right above the heart he’s always baring to her. “Liz.”

There’s a change in tone with her name. A change in mood, and she’s meeting his gaze once more, suspended in a moment where she’s sure what’s coming and waiting for it to come. Flustered, eager, wanting.

“Liz,” he repeats, his voice soft enough to blend into the crashing of the waves. “Will you marry me?”

No ring. No bended knee. No witnesses.

No hesitation.

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

It takes him a second to process it—he’s still lost in his own nervousness, waiting for a blow to fall, so she answers with her mouth in another way. She goes up on tip toe to kiss him, and then he’s in motion, kissing her back, pulling her close enough to meld into one being.  _ Yes _ , she keeps whispering between kisses, and he can barely stop smiling. Neither can she.

When he’s convinced, he rests his forehead against hers. Her hands are still caught in his and their noses brush as they lapse into giddy laughter.

“You don’t have a ring,” she points out, wondering if this was a spur of the moment thing. She’d kind of expected a proposal to come one day—if Max could love her from afar for a decade, he obviously wanted to marry her if he could—but maybe he’d gone with his instincts.

“I thought you’d want to choose it with me.”

He’s right, she loves that idea, rewarding him with another kiss. 

“And I know you don’t like the idea of public proposals,” he continues, and she doesn’t know who he’s been talking to—Maria, or Rosa, or even her  _ papi _ , but he’s spoken to somebody who spilled about the disaster that was Diego’s proposal. She’d known that was coming, right from the time he booked the fancy restaurant, and all she’d wanted to do was get it over with and say yes like she thought it was right to do.

For Max,  _ yes _ comes from the bottom of her heart. There’s no other possible answer.

“No, this was perfect,” she tells him. “Do you have celebratory champagne in that picnic basket?”

“Not champagne. Maybe a little tequila.”

And that has her laughing all over again. Max knows her, right down to the unconventional parts of her soul.

“But first,” he says. “Race you into the water?”

It’s not fair. She screams that he’s cheating as his long legs carry him across the sand, but in the end she’s the winner anyway: the sight of him, happy and bronzed and carefree in the water is the only prize she could ever want.


End file.
